Omkar Kancherla

I always find it repulsive when Indians argue with me about how the British reformed “evil” Hindu customs like Sati. Sati was never sanctioned directly by the order of any religious Hindu leader or scripture. In contrast Christian Pope Innocent VIII directly issued a papal bull, Summis desiderantes affectibus, in 1484 to support the Malleus Maleficarum. This book which means "The Hammer of Witches" was the ultimate Christian witch-hunting manual of Europe, due to which 1/2 million (some say upto to 8 million) innocent women including widows, midwives, & children were burnt to death on "suspicion" of witchcraft over a span of 300 years. Innocent girls as young as 12 yrs of age were hunted, tortured & burned as witches. Even the 8 yr old daughters of these women victims were burned as they considered a witch's entire "progeny was infected". The innocent women & girls were stripped naked, brutally shaved of all body hair, probed in every orifice for any "hidden objects of witchcraft" then branded with hot irons/stretched on the rack until their bodies split apart & then burnt alive or drowned depending on the whims of the judges. The Malleus Maleficarum was the hallmark textbook of the Inquisition of Witches in Europe, with the Pope's holy sanction as its preface. It was so popular that the text ran upto 20 editions! Unlike the mostly voluntary practice of Sati ritual suicide - Christian witch hunting & burning was supported fully by the highest religious sanction in Europe - yet it’s the Hindus who get called the demons. Hypocrisy Max!